A shot of the Chinook II from the Spyderco Website :
The Chinook II has a thin and acute edge, with a deep hollow grind and high initial sharpness, beyond push shaving. It readily out cut a plain edge Boye Boat knife and even outcut a serrated Boye boat knife on webbing and ropes. It is a bit big for light work, and is optomized for heavy grips when you want to apply a lot of force to the cuts.
The ergonomics are very solid. The integral index finger cutout greatly increases grip versatility and flexibility. The clip however is a bit of a problem on hard stabs and doesn't have great ergonomics for chopping in a partial grip. That was the only real ergonomic issue, otherwise the Chinook II fills the hand well and is secure and comfortable.
The Chinook II was used as every day carry for several weeks along side two Boye boat knives, one plain edged and the other serrated. The edge retention of the Chinook II was significantly ahead of the plain edge boat knife which had to be sharpened multiple times while the Chinook II kept cutting.
Impacts : the spine was subjected to hard spine whacks into wood and then concrete. The concrete damaged the tip but the lock was not disengaged or loosened and similarily resisted hard backcuts into solid objects. Very fast and whippy spine whacks also failed to disengage the lock. In general such work is not a problem with lock backs, it is more likely to cause accidental relase of liner and integral locks.
Torques : the Chinook II was stabbed into a seasoned 2x4, getting 1/2" penetration, and twisted sideways until it rotated around in the wood digging a hole. This was very difficult as the wood was solid. The knife was then drove deeper with aid of a mallet until it could not be twisted by hand and the lock was still uneffected.
Chopping : the Chinook chopped through some 1x4 board, it had about 1/10 the chopping ability of the GB Wildlife Hatchet. The cutting ability was high so it sank into the wood readily but there was simply not enough heft to allow a a heavy enough swing to get high penetration. Four sections of the wood were cut, ~150 chops in total, again there was no effect on the lock which further easily handled chopping down a few dozen Alders, 1/4" to 1/2" thick.
Batoning : the Chinook II was batoned through 1/2" up to 2" seasoned spruce. The batoning was light, over a dozen hits to cut through the larger wood on both sides. Then to check for high stress the knife was hit a couple of times harder and the lock bar started to seperate. It could take light batoning fine, but it was not difficult to damage the lock with harder impacts so batoning would want to be constrained to light impacts, care taken to avoid knots which would require too much force to cut through. However even with the lock with a visible gap underneath it, the knife still engaged securely, though play was evident.
Prying : with lateral prying in wood, the knife quickly lost the tip. It did not hardly stress the wood and the tip broke off about 1/2" back from the point, breaking in several places in the wood, S30V is not a great prying steel, no surprise there. The lock was again uneffected. The knife was driven deeper in the wood until the full width of the blade was taking the strain. A friend straddled the knife and plank with one foot on the end of the handle and another on the board (195 lbs) and the knife bent, but not enough to take a set and the lock was not effected.
Hammering : as a last check the knife was stressed from butt to point by placing the cracked point against a log and hitting the butt with a piece of wood to drive the knife into the wood this caused a failure in the pin which the blade rotates around which sheared off. The hinge pin could possibly be made more robust.
UPDATE : It would have been useful to do some of the above with a bit more precision, this was actually done spontaneously while visiting a friend.
The Chinook II was only carried for a short time before heavy work was done to check the lck in extreme conditions. However even during that short period of carry the cutting ability was shown to be high as was the edge retention and the Chinook II readily out cut both a plain edge and serrated Boye Boat knife and had much better edge retention than the plain edge Boat knife. The grip ergonomics were in general very solid aside from the slip which had some comfort issues. In regards to lock security and strength, it takes a large amount of force to damage the lock on this knife, and aside from butt to point impacts, the blade will be broken long before the lock is made insecure. The Chinook II is a very heavy duty folder, and even when the lock is damaged in extreme use it still continues to be secure.
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More information can be obtained at the
Spyderco website.
| Last updated : | 04 : 21 : 2005 |
| Originally written: | 3/30/05 |